Comments on: THE EQUIVALENCE, IT IS FALSEhttp://www.ginandtacos.com/2018/02/27/the-equivalence-it-is-false/
DOPAMINE'S ONLY NATURAL PREDATORMon, 19 Mar 2018 02:43:46 +0000hourly1https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.3By: Lynn Deweeshttp://www.ginandtacos.com/2018/02/27/the-equivalence-it-is-false/#comment-743902
Thu, 08 Mar 2018 05:33:47 +0000http://www.ginandtacos.com/?p=9395#comment-743902I don't know. The WSJ editorial page has apparently gone way off the rails, while the reporting remains coherent. (The editorials sometime contradict the facts in the news section.) They seem to be doing OK. Maybe the editorial page can become the bait that sucks people in to read the actual reporting. Or maybe they should have side-by-side editorials – one lunatic fringe/Republican and a response from someone sane or vice versa.
]]>By: jcdentonhttp://www.ginandtacos.com/2018/02/27/the-equivalence-it-is-false/#comment-742932
Tue, 06 Mar 2018 18:46:01 +0000http://www.ginandtacos.com/?p=9395#comment-742932@Andrew Farrell

It would be a better world. Unfortunately, this shitty one is the only one we've got.

That would be a retweet, though – not as she admits a particularly well-thought-out one, but it's not liberally using it against her enemies.

I don't think we're that far apart – you say naive, I say optimistic (though optimism based on trying the thing and having some success with it). I don't believe there would be any danger of soft-focusing, that isn't really her style. But I understand the NYT's concern.

I was more reacting to the idea that any of this was either ironic in the commonly understood way, or anything that she should 'scrub' – the comments, even the unfortunate ones, are a part of her, and I believe her claim that she genuinely thought this had been taken into account when they offered her the job.

I think a world in which she could have kept the job is a better one than this one – while acknowledging that it's _not_ this one.

My knowledge of this issue consists in googling around and doing a bit of textual analysis of her tweets (which, I think, it probably what the majority of us have). No, those quotes aren't hers. They are my attempt at summarizing her thinking here.

It's pretty obvious to me that when she uses "f*g", she's reclaiming it as part of the LGBT community (although she's also using it and "tard" as part of the lulzy bullshit from earlier incarnations of the internet, which is how we got here today). However, when she uses "n****r" as part of "If God had meant a n****r to talk to our school children, He would have made him president. Oh, but wait…" she has really no right to appropriate the term. Yes, she's using the language of the shitlord community against itself (hence the ironic inversion), but often that kind of shit just perpetuates the text without the also carrying through the ironic inversion of the subtext. i.e. Ironic bigotry still often just ends up looking like bigotry to most.

Her position on the idea that you can be friends with Nazis and not have them affect your politics is naive. They may not affect your politics personally, but if you have any social standing, they gain something as part of that association. The issue isn't that she knew w**v a long time ago when they were both in the trenches of hacktivism, its that she holds the view that being friends with Nazis is just about her personally and also the really-questionable idea that you can or should try to convert Nazis.

Again, its possible to see her firing as a contextual event, predicated on weariness of Nazi sympathy and also on the NYT's recent track record of becoming a platform for an assortment of right wing ghouls and actual Nazis. In that kind of environment, I don't know if an "empathetic" writer, someone who may end up soft-focusing more Nazis on a national platform as part of her attempt to convert them, is really needed. If the NYT was all fire-breathing leftists or whatever, then having a moderating or empathetic voice could be good. As it stands, it would be a bunch of right wingers and someone who might end up sounding a lot like them, although for completely different reasons. She's a complicated person, but ultimately not that useful to the left in pushing any kind of strong narrative on a national stage.

That said, yeah, she should probably write for like the Guardian or the Intercept or something. But those papers already have at least visible leftist voices.

]]>By: Andrew Farrellhttp://www.ginandtacos.com/2018/02/27/the-equivalence-it-is-false/#comment-742811
Tue, 06 Mar 2018 13:09:34 +0000http://www.ginandtacos.com/?p=9395#comment-742811That hasn't made me any less curious about your level of knowledge – I'm not sure if you've read that link, but it doesn't support either of your claims, and the phrase you've put in quotes doesn't seem to be in any sense a quote from her, or in any way a summary of her motives.

"But she's pretty compromised and frankly the kind of internet culture that she grew up in and draws much of her inspiration from (the wild west of early late 90's/2000's that I also grew up in) is partially responsible for the kind of shitty internet culture we have today."

We can argue how much 'much' is – she has a lot of strings to her bow, and first came to my attention when writing a series of articles about Scotland's Independence Referendum – but basically I completely agree with this. Which is _why_ having an excellent empathetic writer with roots in this culture is someone that would be good to have on the NYT. Or the Washington Post, or the Wall Street Journal, or the Guardian – I'm not valorising the NYT here, just to be clear.

I think about a year or two ago, her kind of "co-opting the terminology and using the Nazi's language against them" schtick would have been fine (if that is what she's in fact trying to do, hence my claim about irony). These days it can serve as a cover for more cynical perpetuation of Nazi ideas.

Her actual friendship with uh… a guy who hacks on behalf of The Daily Stormer (and other Nazis, as she herself admits), is a lot more questionable. Again, a few years ago the "I'm friends with Nazis because I'm trying to convert them" line may have had some traction, but these days, it's a lot riskier to permit that sort of bullshit fence-sitting and naiveté.

Ultimately, you can make an argument that she was fired because we all have hair triggers now. I don't think Quinn is actually a Nazi, or even a racist. But she's pretty compromised and frankly the kind of internet culture that she grew up in and draws much of her inspiration from (the wild west of early late 90's/2000's that I also grew up in) is partially responsible for the kind of shitty internet culture we have today. If nothing else, she should have scrubbed her TL.

I don't think she should write for the NYT. But then again, I think that the NYT is an imperialist piece of shit newspaper and no one should write for it. The very least it can do is not give platforms to people with whiffs of Nazism. There's frankly enough outlets willing to do that already.

]]>By: Andrew Farrellhttp://www.ginandtacos.com/2018/02/27/the-equivalence-it-is-false/#comment-742199
Mon, 05 Mar 2018 12:24:18 +0000http://www.ginandtacos.com/?p=9395#comment-742199"She claims that most of that was ironic"

I'd be interested in seeing this, I suspect this claim (yours) is inaccurate.

"that liberally used n****r […] against her enemies"

I'd be interested in seeing this too, as I'm pretty damn certain that's inaccurate. Are you coming at this from a few "what's hot in the web this week" summaries?

While I'm pretty sure that some of details have been blown out of proportion, Quinn does have a questionable record of being unrepentant friends with an unabashed Nazi (w**v), and having a number of tweets that liberally used n****r and f****t against her enemies. She claims that most of that was ironic, but these days, the context has kind of changed. There are no more ironic Nazis, just regular Nazis playing as ironic Nazis. If she believed that this doesn't represent who she is, she should have dropped w**v and scrubbed her damn timeline before applying for the job. Sorry, but her idea of what a pacifist anarchist is kind of doesn't intersect with her public record, if she thought that the two had diverged from her earlier days as channer, she should should have made sure he public record didn't look quite so compromising.

@Everyone else
It's important to remember that the NYT was never "good".
Some things the NYT has done:
– Made a very vocal case for the Iraq War
– Supported broken windows policing
– Supported gentrification
– Supported Charter schools
– Ignores the US's role in the Yemen disaster
– Repeatedly shit on Antifa
– Perpetuates warmongering nonsense about Iran
– Broadly supports neoliberal economic policies

They're just a font of trash, cleverly disguised as a "center-left" paper

]]>By: El dodohttp://www.ginandtacos.com/2018/02/27/the-equivalence-it-is-false/#comment-740416
Fri, 02 Mar 2018 16:37:09 +0000http://www.ginandtacos.com/?p=9395#comment-740416Any number of you have nibbled around the edges, but the heart of this issue is that we only have one political party and the republicans are bat shit nuts. All of these various institutions do not know how to react to them and are still pretending we still have 2 equally important factions. Nytimes is not any different than the senate or any number of institutions that are stuck in neutral. Our country isn’t designed to exist in this manner, it’s why this conversation is boring & has been repeated for 20+ years
]]>By: Alice Johnsonhttp://www.ginandtacos.com/2018/02/27/the-equivalence-it-is-false/#comment-739840
Thu, 01 Mar 2018 20:56:56 +0000http://www.ginandtacos.com/?p=9395#comment-739840@Andrew Farrell

Once the machinery of outrage gets rolling, nothing will change anyone's opinion, unfortunately. I suspect no one here had even heard of Quinn before the "vaguely racist nazi apologist" framing had caught fire across the Internet, and now that they have heard of her within that framing, there is no changing their opinions.

Having followed her work for quite a bit longer than the latest kerfuffle myself, I agree with you that she is being utterly misrepresented and I think it's tragic that someone who could have contributed greatly to a newer, smarter NYT is being compared to the rest of the raft of sellout centrist assholes.

Imagine, having a pacifist anarchist who cut her journalistic teeth by embedding with and reporting on Anonymous campaigns writing for the NYT op-ed page. You'll have to, of course, since the only person answering that description to get anywhere near the job was fired in hours.

Enjoy your sellout centrist assholes, folks. Next time you bitch about the NYT op-ed page, remember that you helped build that.